Showing posts with label dependent capitalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dependent capitalism. Show all posts
Friday, 22 July 2016
Monday, 10 February 2014
Tuesday, 4 June 2013
Wednesday, 25 July 2012
Sunday, 6 May 2012
Thursday, 13 October 2011
Thursday, 21 July 2011
Football by Dance -- No more
Samba sadness
(Decline of Latin America`s football)
Mano Menezes the latest football coach for Brazil has advised that people should keep calm, after Brazil was eliminated last week from Copa America, 2011 by losing to Paraguay in the quarter-finals. This advice has been occasioned by the manner of Brazil`s defeat. After a ragged and uncoordinated play for 90 minutes and 30 minutes extra-time, Brazil shot all its 4 penalty-kicks outside the goalposts – the 5th was not necessary because Paraguay had already won the match. It is a matter for Guiness Book of Records perhaps. Last year Brazil had been eliminated from the World Cup, 2010 in the quarter-finals, as it was in the World Cup, 2006 too. Dunga was the coach then.
This is a worrisome thing, not only for Brazil but for all devotees of football.
Reams have been written on the decline of Brazilian football and more is being written still. I too add my small bit.
In the entire 20th century Brazilian football – dubbed as Samba Football , not very aptly in my opinion – has been the shining south pole to the equally shining north pole of European ( quintessentially, German) football. Much mystical thought has been lavished on this exquisite antipodean pairing. I just jot down here the prominent salients:
a) European football is white, Brazilian is coloured
b) One is corporate and mechanical, the other is individual and artistic
c) One is classical, the other is rock/reggae
d) One is upper class, the other is plebian
and so on.
While these polarities do capture some substance the truth is less simple, as usual.
The game of football is historically and sociologically plebian. This is expressed in the historically given name itself – a game played by “foot” people, as opposed to games by riders of horses, as medieval kingdoms understood it. A game encouraged by the nobility of Europe and Asia (China, Japan) to keep the plebian passions corralled then, and so also now.
Short duration, team/pack spirit, leaderlessness, contest involving brutal strength, agility, and artfulness in equal measure, the ball carrying connotations of a severed head, and deep rootedness and a sort of organic dependence in partisan spectators, football is an updated gladiatorial blood- sport. The game came into maturity when it was caught up in the turmoil of medieval Europe’s warring city states – the remnants of which are today’s city football clubs of Rome, London, Madrid, Milan, Amsterdam who now play to win the UEFA Champions League. In a real sense football remains essentially a club-based urban game, and its national level versions, highlighted in the World Cup, remain somewhat synthetic and relatively less impassioned.
Originating in feudal kingdoms the game underwent a sea change during the 19th-20th century capitalism. It became a profession par excellence. Beckham as an icon is as good as Tom Hanks if not better and Pele goes beyond the pale -- equal to Superman/Batman, if not better. Modern football is one of the finest flowers of capitalism -- open, free, lawful, competitive, talent- based and privilege-free, if not the finest. Today it is also mega-business and involves humungous investments of money, players being bought and sold for millions of dollars among club teams. It is played for super profits, and yet remains essentially unrigged and free -- when most of the capitalist global economy has become monopolistically rigged and neo-medievally controlled. A similar brilliant transformation is taking place in world-cricket by the genie uncorked by the capitalist mode of the Indian Premier League.
It is interesting that communist collectivist societies of Russia, China, Cuba etc produced finest athletes who have to be essentially individualistic, but did not produce good collective or team games like football, hockey, cricket. Why? Tricky dialectic, this – the key will be found in the absence of historical experience of deep city-communities and therefore club-spirit in these societies.
Connected with this is another side to capitalism which is mentioned less by the firangis i.e. colonialism. Capitalism would have remained a provincial European enterprise if it did not have imperialistic colonialism to raise it to a global phenomenon. As in most other spheres, European football today is dominated by players imported from its former colonies. The national team of France for instance in the World Cup 2010 had 9 or 10 non-white players, depending on how to classify Zidane. African and East European players routinely dominate in all big football clubs of European nations. Federation of International football Association (FIFA), the paramount guild-body for global football is currently trying to half heartedly enforce a rule that no club can have more than four “imported” players. Some clubs are trying to evade this rule by resorting to giving questionable citizenship to imported players. Empire is now coming home to roost, like Indian doctors in UK/USA hospitals.
And this brings us back to Brazil. Its sadness is representative of the whole sad Latin American football today. It is often said by the pundits that capitalism is destroying football out there; best players of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay ,etc spend most of their lives playing foe European clubs. The truth is less pure.
It is not that Latin-American football has too much capitalism; it is that it has too little. Just like its economy Latin-American football too has become hijacked and subordinated by global capitalism because its indigenous capitalism has been much weaker. It too has football clubs like Europe, usually set up by its ex-colonial masters, and it has Copa America to rival UEFA Champions League; till recently it had a distinct (samba) style of playing -- although only Brazil was holding out till recently while Argentina had frankly adopted the flat European style since Maradona ; and it has the best players of the game. Yet all this is not enough, its football is not sustainable by its economics. By the onset of 21st century most of its valuable produce – forests, fruits, football -- have become alienated and earmarked for cities, shelves, stadiums of Europe. No wonder Copa America has ceased to fascinate and inspire. Tellingly, major sports tv-networks like Star/ESPN/Ten Sports ignore it altogether. Dungas and Menezes’ can still give battle, but it will be in vain. Alas.
Lately most of Latin America is politically turning from right-wing dictatorships of the 1970s and 80s to some type of left-wing capitalism ( like Nehru`s and Indira Gandhi`s in India ). Can this reverse the decline of football? One can hope and wish, if only for the sake of sporting bio-diversity. But it seems unlikely. If you don’t catch capitalism in time, you can never quite catch up.
Monday, 15 November 2010
Sunday, 7 November 2010
Monday, 25 October 2010
Sunday, 30 May 2010
Reality Check : India`s healthcare
Had by the Hustlers , Again
Heh , heh . How sweetly we have been had , and all within 20–25 years. Business newspapers of the nation ( Economic Times on 24th May and Business Line on 28th May, 2010) have sounded the alarm that already pharmaceutical Trans National Companies ( TNCs) control nearly 50 % of India`s medicines` market of around Rs.47,000 crores.
It is almost back to the bad old days of 1960s/1970s when they had 75%. This, when India is supposed to be on the threshold of becoming a global power, as per the propaganda of Manmohanist globalisation!
Well, well .
How did this come about? Through inorganic growth of TNCs gobbling up Indian pharma companies by mergers & acquisitions. The other day US-based Abbot Laboratories acquired Piramal Healthcare; a few months back Japan`s Daiichi Sankyo bought Ranbaxy Laboratories; this has been going on for some time. Today 3 out of 5 top pharma companies are TNCs. On the other hand the New Era Indian pharma companies tom–tommed by manmohanists while succumbing to product-patents` regime in WTO, like Dr. Reddy`s Laboratories, Ranbaxy, Sun Pharma, etc which were proudly filing their own patents have lost most of their patent claims in foreign lawsuits over the last 10 years.Who is surprised ?
Lawsuits–things done by lawyers, courts, judges, etc–we know well .
Okay , what is the inside story ? Earlier the big market of India could not be touched by TNCs because in 1971 Indira Gandhi–the grandmother of Rahul Gandhi–had made process- patent as India`s governing law in this industry, so that India- made drugs were much cheaper. In 1990s manmohanism switched to products-patent law, promising all the WTO goodies, and joined something called “international community”. The slogan was let-the-best-man(company)-win. Initially Ranbaxy, Dr. Reddy`s, etc seemed to be winning on “merits”, even in USA and Europe. Other Indian companies, being second rate, were expected to be content with making and selling de-patented medicines as generic drugs. Fine.
But it so turns out that a big bunch of lucrative product-patents worth US$70 billion is expiring patency by 2013, and these should by the book then fall to the second rate Indian companies to exploit as generic drugs. The market is too large. And tempting. TNCs want this too for themselves. So, how ? Lo and behold, it amazingly turns out that WTO rules are conveniently sweet on market-access by mergers & acquisitions!
Thus were the two ends of the trap sprung. During patency:TNCs, and during off-patency: TNCs. Heads I win, tails you lose. And in the next 5-7 years the next bunch of TNC patents will be in place; the merry-go-round will start all over again. Jai Ho.
So what , the believers will say since there is nothing beyond belief, all this is just blind market forces–no rigging . The point of course is–and always has been–that the Abbots, etc will not sell medicines at prices which Piramal did. So, poor Indians will have to pay more. The diehards will say, no, we have price-controls, laws, Rules in place for that sort of thing. Belief! Despite having seen the politicians, judges, policemen, bureaucrats running all the nations' rules since 1947?
Inorganic growth. Strange language – of these strange times.
Is it only a pharma story? Lest you are by now beginning to be moved by even larger forebodings, it will be said: look it is case to case–see how Tata bought Corus, Mittals and Jindals bought something or the other. It is all fair game. The book says you win some, you lose some.
Well , history is tough. If you ignore it , it will repeat itself. The firangis have never gone by the book, any book. What is happening now was scripted in 1970s–after the “oil-shock” given to the firangis by the Arab OPEC . A script of Neo-Habsburgism was written: Planet Earth is a lifeboat meant for only a few; Africa is to be depopulated and otherwise degraded back to mineral level; socially and environmentally dirty industries are to be shifted to upstarts like Japan, Korea, India, China, etc; weaponry, key materials, instrumentation, and finance are to be in white hands, preferrably anglo-saxon. Amen .
We have just witnessed the pharma act. Others will follow–by the script. India will forever remain on the road to becoming a global power-- had it taken another road it might have actually become something.For those who like big words what is happening is neo-imperialism; for other folks it is hustle.
Monday, 29 March 2010
Wednesday, 25 November 2009
Saturday, 1 August 2009
Wednesday, 29 July 2009
Monday, 22 June 2009
Sunday, 26 October 2008
Finance Fundas
Fundas of Indian Financial Crisis, 2008- Served Cold
1. For almost a decade, about 75% of daily stock market transactions in India are done by FIIs (of which about 75% again are done through anonymous Participatory Notes). About 20% of the balance are done by Indian mutual funds. Individual public does the remaining 5% . Spectacular rises of stock indices (sensex /nifty) are almost wholly the result of bull operations of FIIs; and these are an integral part of these FIIs` daily global stockmarket operations. Indian market operators imitate FIIs every day of trading. In other words, for nearly a decade Indian stockmarkets are markets of India, not markets for India alone.
2. Most of the FIIs in India are, or were till the other day, investment banks in USA, which are different from regular commercial banks controlled by USA`s reserve bank, i.e. the Federal Reserve. US investment banks are like private asset management trusts, and are almost unsupervised by anyone.
3. For last two decades, due to limited investment opportunities, USA's commercial banks have been lending huge sums to sub-prime home loans – Non Performing Assets in our language. Lending and relending , and then "Securitising" these bad loans and then trading in these “securities”. The bubble has now burst. Commercial banks have gone bankrupt.
4. These commercial banks of USA had substantial holdings of stock of shares/ derivatives. When going bankrupt they unloaded their holdings. This pushed down share prices. Coupled with fall in bank's own shares, this triggered the slump.
5. When shares slumped in USA, its investment banks whose main assets were shares/derivatives, were also hit. They too have gone bankrupt.
6. Many real-economy companies in USA have been for decades playing in the shares/ derivatives market, in order to pad their balance sheets with gains in stock/derivatives market because of low operating incomes/ losses in their actual businesses. With the stockmarket crash, these companies` balanced sheets are also collapsing. Hence, talk of recession, even depression. "Operating" recession was already there for 2 decades, now there is "net" recession.
7. Scenario in EU nations is similar to that of USA's.
8. Indian stockmarket crash of 2008 is due to
(a) pulling out of holdings by FIIs, which is the 75% chunk of the market.
(b) imitation of FIIs by the nervous Indian stockmarket operators.
Nothing more .
9. Indian banks are not today faced with sub-prime loans like US banks. For a change ,GOI is right – there is no real cause for worry.
10. Due to "traditional" approach of RBI, public sector banks in India have not been allowed, despite continual strong temptations offered by the Liberalisers, to invest in stockmarkets beyond a small limit linked to their networth/ assetbase/ etc. This has saved Indian banks, again.
11. Private banks in India have not been so restrained in taking exposure in share/ derivatives markets. That is why ICICI Bank has come under a cloud of suspicion. Ditto for other private banks.
12. Govt. has indicated a figure of Rs.27,000 crore as Indian Bank's exposure to derivatives markets. This is small indeed.
13. But what cannot be quite measured is the indirect exposure of banks in shares/ derivatives by way of disguised loans taken by companies not for their stated purposes but actually for stock/ derivatives investments. With the sharemarket crash, such loans will have become sub-prime / NPAs. How much are such disguised loans is anybody's guess. Here again, public sector banks would not have gone the whole hog, even unwittingly. Private sector banks are another story, but even they would not have, I guess, gone really wild except perhaps one and a half bank.
14. The really worrying part is the extent to which Indian real- economy companies have resorted to shares/ derivatives exposure for padding their balance-sheets. No one knows, and no one is telling.
15. Talk about fundamentals and valuations are so much blather and bullshit. In reality there is nothing which can be called actual value of share. Accountants just make some wishful mathematical correlations with balance-sheet items like networth, turnover, dividend payout, etc. In reality, brokers determine the actual value, each day.
16. Conservative and traditional Indian Banks, mainly public sector ones, have saved the Indian economy once again. If the Liberalisers and Globalizers of banks had carried out their hoped for heist, India too would have been in the dumps. A big lesson here, for the Indian public, parliament and pundits.
17. As in USA/Europe so in India , the affected corporate groups after getting bailout packages from government ( which means ordinary public`s taxpayings) are doing much doom – mongering in their pliant media to extract even more money from scared govt/public .
1. For almost a decade, about 75% of daily stock market transactions in India are done by FIIs (of which about 75% again are done through anonymous Participatory Notes). About 20% of the balance are done by Indian mutual funds. Individual public does the remaining 5% . Spectacular rises of stock indices (sensex /nifty) are almost wholly the result of bull operations of FIIs; and these are an integral part of these FIIs` daily global stockmarket operations. Indian market operators imitate FIIs every day of trading. In other words, for nearly a decade Indian stockmarkets are markets of India, not markets for India alone.
2. Most of the FIIs in India are, or were till the other day, investment banks in USA, which are different from regular commercial banks controlled by USA`s reserve bank, i.e. the Federal Reserve. US investment banks are like private asset management trusts, and are almost unsupervised by anyone.
3. For last two decades, due to limited investment opportunities, USA's commercial banks have been lending huge sums to sub-prime home loans – Non Performing Assets in our language. Lending and relending , and then "Securitising" these bad loans and then trading in these “securities”. The bubble has now burst. Commercial banks have gone bankrupt.
4. These commercial banks of USA had substantial holdings of stock of shares/ derivatives. When going bankrupt they unloaded their holdings. This pushed down share prices. Coupled with fall in bank's own shares, this triggered the slump.
5. When shares slumped in USA, its investment banks whose main assets were shares/derivatives, were also hit. They too have gone bankrupt.
6. Many real-economy companies in USA have been for decades playing in the shares/ derivatives market, in order to pad their balance sheets with gains in stock/derivatives market because of low operating incomes/ losses in their actual businesses. With the stockmarket crash, these companies` balanced sheets are also collapsing. Hence, talk of recession, even depression. "Operating" recession was already there for 2 decades, now there is "net" recession.
7. Scenario in EU nations is similar to that of USA's.
8. Indian stockmarket crash of 2008 is due to
(a) pulling out of holdings by FIIs, which is the 75% chunk of the market.
(b) imitation of FIIs by the nervous Indian stockmarket operators.
Nothing more .
9. Indian banks are not today faced with sub-prime loans like US banks. For a change ,GOI is right – there is no real cause for worry.
10. Due to "traditional" approach of RBI, public sector banks in India have not been allowed, despite continual strong temptations offered by the Liberalisers, to invest in stockmarkets beyond a small limit linked to their networth/ assetbase/ etc. This has saved Indian banks, again.
11. Private banks in India have not been so restrained in taking exposure in share/ derivatives markets. That is why ICICI Bank has come under a cloud of suspicion. Ditto for other private banks.
12. Govt. has indicated a figure of Rs.27,000 crore as Indian Bank's exposure to derivatives markets. This is small indeed.
13. But what cannot be quite measured is the indirect exposure of banks in shares/ derivatives by way of disguised loans taken by companies not for their stated purposes but actually for stock/ derivatives investments. With the sharemarket crash, such loans will have become sub-prime / NPAs. How much are such disguised loans is anybody's guess. Here again, public sector banks would not have gone the whole hog, even unwittingly. Private sector banks are another story, but even they would not have, I guess, gone really wild except perhaps one and a half bank.
14. The really worrying part is the extent to which Indian real- economy companies have resorted to shares/ derivatives exposure for padding their balance-sheets. No one knows, and no one is telling.
15. Talk about fundamentals and valuations are so much blather and bullshit. In reality there is nothing which can be called actual value of share. Accountants just make some wishful mathematical correlations with balance-sheet items like networth, turnover, dividend payout, etc. In reality, brokers determine the actual value, each day.
16. Conservative and traditional Indian Banks, mainly public sector ones, have saved the Indian economy once again. If the Liberalisers and Globalizers of banks had carried out their hoped for heist, India too would have been in the dumps. A big lesson here, for the Indian public, parliament and pundits.
17. As in USA/Europe so in India , the affected corporate groups after getting bailout packages from government ( which means ordinary public`s taxpayings) are doing much doom – mongering in their pliant media to extract even more money from scared govt/public .
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